December 2009 UAH Global Temperature Update +0.28 Deg. C
by Roy W. Spencer, Ph. D.
The global-average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly fell back to the October level of +0.28 deg. C in December.
The tropics continue warm from El Nino conditions there, while the NH and SH extratropics anomalies cooled from last month. While the large amount of year-to-year variability in global temperatures seen in the above plot makes it difficult to provide meaningful statements about long-term temperature trends in the context of global warming, the running 25-month average suggests there has been no net warming in the last 11 years or so.
[NOTE: These satellite measurements are not calibrated to surface thermometer data in any way, but instead use on-board redundant precision platinum resistance thermometers carried on the satellite radiometers.]
YR MON GLOBE NH SH TROPICS
2009 1 +0.304 +0.443 +0.165 -0.036
2009 2 +0.347 +0.678 +0.016 +0.051
2009 3 +0.206 +0.310 +0.103 -0.149
2009 4 +0.090 +0.124 +0.056 -0.014
2009 5 +0.045 +0.046 +0.044 -0.166
2009 6 +0.003 +0.031 -0.025 -0.003
2009 7 +0.411 +0.212 +0.610 +0.427
2009 8 +0.229 +0.282 +0.177 +0.456
2009 9 +0.422 +0.549 +0.294 +0.511
2009 10 +0.286 +0.274 +0.297 +0.326
2009 11 +0.497 +0.422 +0.572 +0.495
2009 12 +0.280 +0.318 +0.242 +0.503
We need a complimentary graph to the UAH temp anomaly called the Roy Spencer selected average n-month anomaly graph. We can um and ah as the value for n climbs above average some months and speculate if there’s a solar cycle – Spencer n relation.
Seriously, I’ve been wondering for a while if the cooling we’re definately experiencing will show up at all on UAH. Robert Felix had the idea oceans warm during (land) ice ages. I don’t agree with his underwater volcano theory. Instead I wonder about changes to the cloud system as being the cause of ocean warming and land cooling. In which case the oceans warming will offset the land cooling. So no SC signature on UAH.
Lief’s skepticism for Svensmark reminded me to think of different mechanisms for the solarcycle Earth climate relation.
In line with Lief saying Earth’s magnetic field has much more influence on incident cosmic rays, those graphics on how the suns magnetic field squashs the Earth’s field leads me to wonder how much less squashed is the Earth’s magnetic field during solar minimum? Would this variation in squashedness affect the incident cosmic rays?
This was my 1st theory when I 1st heard about GCR and cloud formation. It seems the most simple and intuitive.
We seem to be seeing a large redistribution of tropospheric heat energy with mid latitude regions cooling but equatorial and polar regions remaining relatively warm.
In the process of that redistribution the air circulation patterns have shifted substantially equatorward but that in itself is merely an extension of the changes that should have been apparent to all observers of weather and climate since 2000.
Applying my general climate description I would say that the following is the likely explanation:
i) Generally a latitudinal shift in the air circulation patterns is ocean driven and since about 2000 the PDO has been trending to the negative phase so that gives a basic background cooling effect involving the observed equatorward shift in the air circulation systems.
ii) In contrast the Arctic Oscillation that controls the size and position of the polar high pressure systems is driven by a combination of the speed of the hydrological cycle as dictated by the rate of ocean energy release and the speed at which the stratosphere can radiate energy to space which is driven by variations in the turbulence of the flow of energy from the sun. The SABER satellite results appear to show that the rate of loss of energy to space is greater when the sun is active and less when the sun is less active.
iii) At present the quiet sun is reducing the rate of energy loss to space and the stratosphere is warming. At the same time the 2009 El Nino has been pumping energy faster to the stratosphere. The combined effects have both been supplementing one another to increase the flows of energy up into and downward out of the stratosphere to enhance the size of the polar high pressure cells and push them equatorward against the counter pressure from the El Nino.
iv) The result is cooling mid latitudes but warming equatorial and more polar latitudes. There have been larger and more frequent and more persistent flows of cold air out of the polar regions and of warmer air into polar regions.
v) Such situations can arise independently of any background warming or cooling trend hence warm years in the LIA and cold years in the MWP
rbateman (19:06:56) :
tallbloke (09:45:17) :
My model says the oceans start emitting heat-energy when the sun drops below 40SSN. So the since the SSN was above this value for much of the C20th, there is a lot of extra heat built up in the ocean which has caused the big el nino’s as the sun’s high activity values have started to wane since 1992. These big el nino’s propped up the warmth for some time, but we are now starting to feel the effects of the quiescent sun more directly.
Couple of questions:
How long before the oceans’ reserve heat supply is depleted to the point
where it is no longer a factor?
Does the currentSSN-40SSN figure scale linerarly in effect?
ex. – currentSSN=10-40SSN = -30
so would a previousSSN=0-40SSN = -40, so the previous SSN cools 1.3 times as much as the currentSSN?
Difficult to tell, as previous minima during the satellite age didn’t have SSN=0 for long. Short minima, high maxima kept the sunspot average high right up to 2003. This is what makes the “temp went up while max SSN has gone down since 1958, so it can’t be the sun” argument so stupid. It’ the overall count across minima which matters, not SSN max.
More discussion here:
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/my-simple-solar-planetary-energy-model/
Cant understand this noise about 25 months or whatever running average?
Its just the red line in the plot? Want it to follow the temp.-plot more?
-Go down on number of months.
Want it to be even smoother? Go up.
Depends if you want to see an average, or all the spikes?
Cannot see the problem.
Keep wondering what possible evidence would disprove AGW/human made climate change?
60 years of flat temperatures? 90 years?
Never? because all those scientists can’t be wrong?
Stephen Wilde (23:32:02) :
Someone needs to animate this on the web. And put in Svensmarks cloud-stuff too.
And kill the AGW theory for good.
Leif Svalgaard (19:55:40) :
Leif Svalgaard (19:54:18) :
I have generated 20 random y values in a time series.
Using simple averaging and linear trend, if slope of the trend of the raw data is increasing, the slope of smoothed data is greater, per Excel anyway.
Original values trend: y = 0.4488x + 45.189 len 20
3 len averaged trend: y = 0.5281x + 43.96 len 17
4 len averaged trend: y = 0.532x + 43.906 len 16
You must be speaking of some other aspect or other smoothing than simple averaging. Could you clarify? Were you speaking of the length of the trend line?
I think that the satellite data for the nh. may be higher than expected because the flow of air shown from jetstream diagrams has been from the north atlantic through the arctic and back down to us in europe and north america, it could be that air above the north atlantic is not as cold as it would be if there was no blocking
Re: phlogiston (19:17:35)
“The Antarctic Circumpolar Wave is a coupled ocean/atmosphere wave that circles the Southern Ocean in approximately eight years. Since it is a wave-2 phenomenon (there are two ridges and two troughs in a latitude circle) at each fixed point in space a signal with a period of four years is seen. The wave moves eastward with the prevailing currents.
Note that although the “wave” is seen in temperature, atmospheric pressure, sea ice and ocean height, the variations are hard to see in the raw data and need to be filtered to become apparent. Because the reliable record for the Southern Ocean is short (since the early 1980s) and signal processing is needed to reveal its existence […]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Circumpolar_Wave
Note the harmonics here:
http://www.sfu.ca/~plv/fSAM_fAAO..png
photon without a Higgs (22:47:47) :
Then start waxing your skis for those longer skiing seasons that Australia and New Zealand have been having.
Hi photon!!!!
You mean ski seasons like these :
http://users.tpg.com.au/users/mpaine/snow.html#mtperisher
To be fair 2009, got off to a great start in late April, about six weeks early.
http://www.fallscreek.com.au/SensationalEarlySnowfall
Unfortunately most of it did not last. I can’t recall how the season eventually finished up. Personally I can’t stand the stuff.
Bart (18:53:05) “I’m not getting all of the complaints about a 25 month running average.”
Moving average – (running averages are anchored at the left-end).
2 things:
1) As you roll the smoothing-bandwidth, you cyclically reduce local-variance as you pass through subharmonics of dominant periods (e.g. diurnal, annual – i.e. anything stationary).
2) As you increase the bandwidth, you cut more centred-averages off the ends of a series.
a bit ot
C.I.A. Is Sharing Data With Climate Scientists
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/science/earth/05satellite.html?hp
who are the 60 climate scientists with security clearances to receive CIA satelite data ?
>>Other comments in this thread have talked about the
>>ocean as a heat (energy) sink
But how much heat can it sink? The North Sea, admittedly a rather shallow sea at a high latitude, cools by about 10oc each winter. Even if the larger oceans cool at a lower rate, it would not take long for them to exhaust much of their energy. Five years?
.
Re: phlogiston (19:17:35)
btw, using a boxcar-kernel method, I get an estimate of 28.45 months for the (average) QBO period. Check the harmonic mean of this and (a) twice the terrestrial polar motion group-wave period and (b) the JN synodic period. You’ll get exactly 4 years – which matches ACW …but as wikipedia points out, the ACW record is short.
Re: yonason
I didn’t do the maths myself.
[Trying html tags first time, does it work?..]
Elementary Climate Physics, F.W. Taylor, Oxford University Press 2005.
Excellent book by the way.
“The top 3.2m of the ocean has the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere, and the total ocean heat content is about 1,000 times that of the atmosphere” (p.9)
Smokey (20:56:32) :
“It’s not climate change, it’s only weather… everywhere.”
So you’d rather base your views on anecdotal evidence from the Drudge Report rather than Dr Spencer’s satellite readings?
http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/6276/4jan10uahlt.png
Jan 4 globally was the warmest day of that date for the last 21 years.
Tilo Reber (14:33:19) :
If you’re convinced ENSO is the driver for the past variations in UAH temperatures, why don’t you plot it for the entire dataset? If you’ve found a mechanism that can explain the injection of energy for the last thirty years you’ve got a major publication to write up on this.
Lamont (20:19:49) :
“You can’t play this month-to-month game with UAH data, when we know that there’s a confirmed annual instrument signal in the UAH data.”
Here’s the 12-month running average data which will remove any seasonal variation:
http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6296/12monthaveragealluah.png
To all those who oft repeat “weather isn’t climate” and “a couple of years data is too short a time frame” etc
It’s been 20 frigging YEARS since IPCC’s early predictions.
So how are they faring with their projections/predictions?
Can anyone help me with the above?
The IPCC have already adjusted their climate sensitivity twice. Their temp. projections thrice and sea level rise….well take your pick.
Someone please tell me which of their forecasts have EVEN COME CLOSE in 20 years, THAT”S 20 WHOLE YEARS
If not, shut up, sit down and read what reasoned logical people are posting on this blog. LEARN SOMETHING YOU LEMMINGS
Oops–I meant to undo the blockquote above, not add another layer. I.e., the last two paragraphs are my own comments.
meemoe_uk (23:26:43) :
In line with Leif saying Earth’s magnetic field has much more influence on incident cosmic rays, those graphics on how the suns magnetic field squashs the Earth’s field leads me to wonder how much less squashed is the Earth’s magnetic field during solar minimum?
The Earth’s magnetic field at the surface is 10,000 times stronger than the magnetic field of the solar wind, so although the solar wind does deform the outer magnetosphere, there is very little squashing going on further in, with negligible effect on cosmic rays. The real issue is that the Earth’s field itself varies very much [might even disappear] over timescales of centuries and longer. The dipole moment of the field has decreased 10% over the past century or so.
wayne (23:50:09) :
You must be speaking of some other aspect or other smoothing than simple averaging. Could you clarify? Were you speaking of the length of the trend line?
I should have been more explicit. The variance decreases and the trends of short pieces of the data decreases. Not the trend over the whole data set.
Baa Humbug (03:03:10) :
“Someone please tell me which of their forecasts have EVEN COME CLOSE in 20 years, THAT”S 20 WHOLE YEARS”
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2592-2008.07.pdf
Why the 25 Months???
It is twice the average length of the average El Nino and La Nina during the 30 years [not including the current el nino].
Originally I thought “I” would throw a suggestion that twice the average El Nino/La Nina…THEN I did the math. average ElNino/La Nina = 12.5 months
I notice that these graphs tend to show December as being warmer than June. Can we take it from this that Southern Hemisphere weather trumps Northern Hemisphere weather every time? Funny that, I would have thought all that ocean at stable temperatures in the South would have made the temperature less prone to extremes…..
Attached is a plot of 3 heights from AMSU-A.
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/2104/amsutemptrends.png
This has a 28 day average (used to make the plots more readable!)
You will note that until a couple of months ago there used to be a height of 1km plot (CHLT) This showed significant warming.
This has now been replaced with the sea surface temp (again one could ask is this to hide the incline – or perhaps Spencer can explain why this is no longer provided?)
The plots only start in 1998 as this is all trhat is provided on the page:
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/amsutemps.html
Before believing in the satellite data is the reference it is worth considering this weighting plot:
http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_description.html#figures
Note that each height is a function of all heights – i.e. the temp at 4km is actually a function of the temp at 4k +-quite a lot of other heights.
I posted:
Sean Ogilvie (08:43:51) :
Nit picking alert:
I’ve posted this before and will again. The official number hasn’t been posted yet. I respect Dr. Roy Spencer and realize that he basically runs the program but I prefer to wait until it is officially posted at:
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2
Hopefully it will remain unchanged.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
OK it’s official. Now I’m happy…